priest is faid to sprinkle a new-married couple, Mr. Park began to suspect that the old lady was actuated by mischief or malice; but she gave him serioufly to understand that it was a nuptial benediction from the bride's own person, and which, on fuch occafions, is always received by the young unmarried Moors as a mark of distinguished favour."

From the abstract given here we may expect a most interesting and affecting account from Mr. Park himself, of his thoughts and feelings when escaped from the "land of thieves and murderers." Having fortunately found his horse, he traversed a defart country for two days; oppressed by hunger and the most tormenting thirst, he came to the huts of fome Foulah shepherds, where he was very kindly entertained. Having entered the dominions of the Negroes he experienced much kindness, and wandered for fifteen days, till, at length, on the fixteenth, he beheld, flowing through a very extensive town, Sego, the capital of Bambarra, and, flowing from west to east, the majestic Niger. The King of Bambarra himself appears to have been well-disposed towards Mr. Park, but, afraid of incenfing the Moors, great numbers of whom were in his capital, he sent him money to purchase fifty days provisions, and to conduct him out of his dominions on the road to Tombuctoo. Sego, as described by Mr. Park, with the adjacent country, wore an appearance of magnificence and cultivation which he did not expect to find in the heart of Africa. Before the King of Bambarra had taken measures, Mr. Park had recourse to the hospitality of a poor Negro woman :-" She led him to a cottage, procured him an excellent supper of fish, and plenty of corn for his horse; after which she spread a mat for him upon the floor." The good woman having performed the rites of hofpitality towards himself, called in the female part of her family, and made them spin cotton for a great part of the night. They lightened their labour by fongs, one of which must have been composed extempore, for our traveller was himself the subject of it; and the air was, in his opinion, the sweetest and most plaintive he had ever heard. The words, as may be expected, were simple, and may be literally translated as follows:"The winds roared, and the rain fell. The poor white man, faint and weary, came and fat under our tree. He has no mother to bring him milk-no wife to grind his rice." Chorus.-" Let us pity the white man-no mother has he, &c. &c." Simple as the words are, they are natural and affecting; and contain a curious allufion to the state of manners in savage life, in which the women perform all the domestic duties.

Our traveller learned from the guide that conducted him to Silla from Sego, that it would be very dangerous for him to proceed onwards to Tombuctoo, as the northern banks of the Niger were chiefly in the poffeffion of the Moors to Tombuctoo. Finding there was little hopes of escaping from Tombuctoo, should he arrive at that city, he got all the information concerning its fize, population, the manufactures, trade, and manners of the inhabitants, that he could collect. He now determined to return along the fouthern bank of the Nigr, which was more beyond the reach of the Moors. Being now wholly among the Negroes, he had an opportunity of minutely observing their manners, dispositions, opinions, manufactures, and arts. Hospitality is confidered as one of the first moral duties. This exertion of benevolence Mr. Park daily experienced, and others he often observed. They believe in a Supreme Being, and in a future state of rewards and punishments, appointed for good and bad men. This important belief Mr. Park declares to be universal among them. We are informed in the abstract, that Mr. Park's narrative will contain an accurate account of the vegetable and animal productions of this part of Africa; the character of the natives; the agriculture and manufactures; modes of living, manners, superstitions, wars, police, and government; arts, commerce, especially those branches of the laft connected with European trade; all which his travels through the Negroes enabled him to investigate. Mr. Park traced the Niger to its fource, which he found to be at a small village, called Sankari. Soon after, being confined by fickness, he experienced the most benevolent attention from a Negro, named Carfa Taura. Withing to return to the Gambia, but a defart of five hundred miles intervening, he was obliged to wait until his friend Carfa should be ready to cross it, with a caravan of fl ves, which did not happen till five months after Mr. Park's recovery. In that time, by converfing with his hott, and other Negroes, he much increased his knowledge of those countries. The abstract of his travels, drawn up by Bryan Edwards, must raise very high expectations of Mr. Park's deftined work; expectations, which those who know him concur in thinking his accuracy of obfervation, difcriminating and vigorous mind, fully qualified him to fulfil.

A most important geographical discovery by Mr. Park, is, the course of the Niger, which he has ascertained to be from west to east, as affirmed many ages ago by Herodotus: he alfo fubftantiates the account of the Lolophagi, so long deemed fabulous. The more discovery is increased, the more manifeftly does the abfurdity appear of that fpecies of incredulity which obstinately denies historical allegations supported by teftimony, because without the range of its own confined experience.

In Major Rennell's reasonings on the geographical discoveries of Mr. Park, there is, as might be expected from the author, great knowledge and most ingenious inference, with confiderable probability of just conjecture, especially on the farther course and discharge of the Niger.

We wait with impatience for an opportunity of confidering the interesting and important travels, discoveries, and conclusions of Mr. Park, when fully given to the world by himself.

ART. V. Memoirs of the Kings of Great Britain of the House of Brunswick-Lunenburg. By W. Belsham. 2 Vols. 8vo. Pp. 788. Price 14s. Robinfons, London. 1798.

WE Prodicom Mr.

E proceed to accompany Mr. Belsham, according to a

though, by adopting this progressive arrangement, we deviate from his confufed mode of writing. In our critique on his " History, from the Revolution to the Acceffion of the House of Hanover," we observed, that he despised giving references or authorities; but we find that, when he was a younger man, he abounded in quotations, and delighted in extracts. One circumstance, however, appears remarkably strange, especially when we recollect, that "he is the best poet that feigns most;" that his principal vouchers to character are selected from the writings of Pope, and, confequently, that the historic truth of Mr. Belsham depends on the malignant and rancorous fatires of the Dunciad From such impure fource does this scribbler draw the streams that he circulates; and in such waters, warped and distorted by the gufts of party-virulence, it is impoffible that a faithful delineation of perfons, or forms, can be reflected; yet, in such a mirror, must a modern reader view the resemblance of Lords Hervey, Chesterfield, Townshend, and Scarborough; Bithops Herring and Secker; and the patriots, Shippen and Pelham. For the character of Charles the XIIth, of Sweden, he gives us an extract from Johnson's Imitation of Juvenal; for a picture of the melancholy decay of Scotland, in consequence of the Union, he gives us the language of the antient Bard of Caledonia :

"I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were defolate. The fire had refounded in the halls, but the voice of the people is heard no

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more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox locked out from the windows; the rank grafs of the wall waved round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; filence is in the house of her fathers." P. 369, VOL. I.

It is poffible, however, that Mr. B. may not mean to tranfmit authentic history; for he has here adopted the French infignificant title of Memoirs, and therefore he may only defign to write what he remembers. To this suggestion, however, we cannot easily accord, fince this acute and learned author feels himself highly indignant, because Coxe has indifcriminately coupled his name with the fuperficial Smollets. (vid. late Preface.) However lightly we may estimate the writer of Roderick Random, as an historian, he certainly knew men and manners much better than Mr. Belsham; he is, in general, consistent in his descriptions, and poffefsed, at leaft, equal information with him. But, in history, we expect not empty declamation, or pretty poetry; we look for the foundation of modern British history in the Journals of the Houses of Parliament, the Statutes at Large, official Gazettes, and State Papers; authentic Records, preserved in our public Libraries; Hatsel's Precedents, the State Trials, public Treaties, &c. To these, however, Mr. B. has not had the leaft recourse; for he has not cited one passage from fuch authorities, though he frequently refers to the works of the philofophic Frederic of Pruffia, Lord Melcombe, and scraps of poetry, in proof of his statements. If our youth continue to derive their knowledge of the English Constitution, and the laws of their country, from such garbled compilations, we shall foon find them as ignorant of the real state of the nation, in the eighteenth century, as are some modern young ladies, perfectly acquainted with the Recess of Miss Lee, the Rofes, and other historical Romances, of the true events that occurred in the reigns of Elizabeth, and the Plantagenets. Such publications, in which fiction and truth are blended, if poffible, are ten times more destructive than novels in general; for they incapacitate the mind for the reception of correct information, by the false ideas previously implanted.

But to recur more immediately to the publication before us. In a late number we exhibited a specimen of Mr. B.'s masterly pencil, in the portrait of Lord Clarendon. We will now display a few lines of the face of Louis the XIVth: he was "vain, unfeeling, unprincipled, haughty, ambitious; the ruling paffion of his life was the thirst of GLORY." (P. 129. VOL.1.) He was haughty, that is, "he was generous, affable, affable, condescending." (P.130.) He was " unfeeling," yet his heart was foftened by distress:" (ibid.) He acknowledged, when too late to rectify his error, that he had formed mistaken opinions respecting that glory which he had been fo anxioufly folicitous to acquire;" (ibid.) yet he had been a " munificent patron and rewarder of merit. Under his reign great characters were formed; great public works, both of ornament and utility, constructed. Science, and the arts, flourished under his aufpices, and a new Augustan age appeared." When Louis wrote the letter to the Count d'Estrades, wherein he stated " that he aims at glory, preferable to any other confideration," he had more expanded notions of the meaning of that word than Mr. B. who appears to confine it to martial glory. If Mr. B. understands the Greek language, (which we much doubt ;) for, speaking of the pragmatic fanction, in a pragmatical note, he observes, the term " pragmatic," universally applied to this famous edict, is used in a sense so uncommon, that it may be pardonable en paffant, to remark its derivation from the Greek πραγματικος, carrying with it the complex meaning of a public and weighty sanction;") when πραγματικο, fignifies neither public nor weighty, but fimply active sanction,) we advise him to tranflate this word into that language, and then he will find that Δοξα, which signifies glory, is, at the same time, a real definition of it, and a definition pregnant with confequences. This word properly means opinion, and is made use of to denote glory, as confifting in the good opinion which the world has of us. Εν δοξη είναι, is to be in the good opinion of others, and δοκιμος is one of whom the public has a good opinion. Louis, probably, was a better scholar than such a biographer.

In the same spirit of felf-contradiction, he fays, "în contemplating the history of this reign, (George I.) we have just cause to lament the weakneffes and defects of the external system of policy by which its counsels were influenced;" (VOL. 1. P. 264.)-In P. 262 he had observed, that " if we cannot always applaud the justice, or the wisdom of his counsels, it must, at least, be acknowledged, that they were enforced with an extraordinary degree of vigour and fuccefs."

In the quotations of Belsham verfus Belsham, we have confined our extracts to two adjoining pages: were we to review Sir Robert Walpole's character, at length, who is represented as pufillanimous and vigorous, phlegmatically indifferent, yet of a clear and mafculine understanding, our readers would stare with astonishment. But Mr. B. though a difsenter, and a strong enemy to "CHURCH AUTHORITY, the chimera vomiting flames," has copied a part of an able and animated